Blippar and the masters of augmented reality search

A few days ago I was searching for interesting articles to share in my twitter stream and I met Blippar. I was attracted by the fact the startup just collected 54 m dollars and I soon discovered this round was following another 45 m dollars about one year ago. We all know augmented reality search is a hot topic, but I wanted to investigate what is exactly worth such a big amount of money.

Blippar launched back in 2012 with the mission of bringing augmented reality to everyday objects on behalf of brands, advertisers, and publishers. With the addition of a Blipp on objects like magazine pages and ketchup bottles, Blippar could serve added content to consumers by simply letting them scan a Blipp on that object. As reported by Techcrunch.

If I have to associate a word to Blippar, is “curiosity”. Their app gives to the user the ability to see more information about any object in front of the camera. Blippar makes objects come to life and claims more than 50 m users in more than 170 countries around the world. So I downloaded the app for a test. The first object in front of my camera was, not surprisingly my laptop, so I pointed at it and tapped (or blipped as they say). The app prompted me a description of what a laptop is, recent youtube videos of laptops, magazine articles, shops selling laptops in the nearby and a nice form where I can ask for more information about what I want to see in Blippar. Really good. Then I pointed at my Ipad and Blippar told everything about pianos… the good thing was that now the options were different and it suggested me apps to play music, tutorials on how to play a piano and youtube videos of great composers. It means the research is contextual to the object on the screen, which increases the opportunities to be useful and connect brands and consumers.

Why are we talking about brands now? Because this is visual marketing. And it’s the future. I think you’re all aware that the fastest growing social networks are those related to images and pictures like Instagram and Pinterest. And I’m sure we all understand that the speed and simplicy of how an information is “consumed” is part of our fast society. The potential of visual marketing on the go is then huge. Look at something, blip it, increase your knowledge about it and potentially close a related purchase in seconds. In this process, brands want to appear, interact, influence so they can achieve their usual marketing targets (acquire, retain, inform, entertain etc…) in a new way. But it’s not only about marketing, because the possibilities are endless. I am a great fan of the couple “education + technology” and augmented reality search, here, can play a major role in the future.

Augmented reality search resources

If you’re curios and want to investigate more on this topic I recommend: